Storage Subsystem Access Prioritization by System Process and Foreground Application Identification

1. A method comprising: identifying a foreground application executing on a system; identifying all processes in the system associated with the foreground application by calling an operating system routine, a returned value of which is an argument to make a subsequent operating system routine call to perform the identifying all processes in the system associated with the foreground application; and transmitting, to a storage subsystem driver, information designating storage subsystem access requests for processes associated with the foreground application as high priority.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: transmitting, to the storage subsystem driver, information designating storage subsystem access requests for processes not associated with the foreground application as non-high priority.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein transmitting, to the storage subsystem driver, information designating the storage subsystem access requests for processes associated with the foreground application as high priority includes transmitting a process identifier and a priority designator for each process associated with the foreground application.

4. A system comprising: a processor; a storage subsystem; a bus operatively coupling the processor and the storage subsystem; a storage subsystem driver held in a memory and executable by the processor to facilitate communication with the storage subsystem by processes executable by the processor; and software stored in the storage subsystem and executable by the processor to prioritize process storage subsystem access, wherein the software executes to cause the system to: identify applications operating on the processor; identify processes associated with each respective identified application, the identifying including calling a system operating system routine that returns a process identifier of each process associated with an identified application; determine a priority of the identified processes associated with each respective identified application including obtaining application priority designations from a set of administrative settings stored on the system, the administrative settings including one or more application priority rules, the one or more priority rules specifying that processes associated with a foreground application are of a highest priority; and transmit process priority information over the bus to the storage subsystem driver if one or more of the identified processes is determined to have a higher priority than another identified process, wherein the process priority information is transmitted separate from storage subsystem requests.

5. The system of claim 4 , wherein transmitting process priority information to the storage subsystem driver includes transmitting a process identifier and a priority designator for each identified process determined to have a higher priority than another identified process.

6. The system of claim 4 , wherein transmitting process priority information over the bus to the storage subsystem driver includes encoding the processes priority information according to a protocol compatible with the storage subsystem driver.

7. The system of claim 4 , wherein the software to prioritize process storage subsystem access, when executing, operates on top of a system operating system.

8. The system of claim 4 , wherein transmitting process priority information to the storage subsystem driver includes transmitting information to update priority information of one or more processes.

9. A machine-readable storage medium, with instructions to prioritize process storage subsystem access stored thereon which when executed by a processor of a machine, result in the machine: identifying applications operating on the machine; identifying processes executing on the machine associated with each identified application, the identifying including calling an operating system routine that returns a process identifier of each process associated with an identified application; applying application priority rules to the identified processes associated with each identified application to generate a process priority message to one or more machine subsystems including a storage subsystem, wherein applying the application priority rules includes obtaining application priority designations from a set of stored administrative settings, the administrative settings including one or more application priority rules, the one or more priority rules specifying that processes associated with a foreground application are of a highest priority; and transmitting the process priority message to the one or more machine subsystems, including the storage subsystem.

10. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , wherein transmitting the process priority message to the one or more machine subsystems includes transmitting the process priority message to a driver of each respective one or more machine subsystems including a storage subsystem driver of the storage subsystem.

11. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , wherein the instructions stored thereon which when further executed by the processor of the machine, result in the machine: iteratively identifying applications operating on the machine; iteratively identifying processes executing on the machine associated with each identified application; iteratively applying the application priority rules to the identified processes associated with each identified application to generate a process priority message to one or more machine subsystems; and transmitting the process priority message to the one or more machine subsystems, including the storage subsystem, when the recursive application of the priority rules results in a process priority change.